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Cuba, the corporate media and the suicide of Orlando Zapata Tamayo

By Salim Lamrani

March 4, 2010 -- On
February 23, 2010, Cuban inmate Orlando Zapata Tamayo died after 83
days on hunger strike. He was 42. This is the first such incident in Cuba since
inmate Pedro Luis Boitel died in 1972 under similar conditions. The
corporate media put the tragic incident on front pages and
emphasised the plight of Cuban prisoners.[1]

Zapata's
dramatic exit sparked a justifiable global uproar. The Cuban prisoner's
case undeniably fosters sympathy and a sense of solidarity with a
person who expressed his despair and malaise in prison, carrying out his
hunger strike to the ultimate consequence. The heartfelt emotion
aroused by his case is quite respectable. In contrast, the manipulation
of Tamayo's death and of the grief of his family and friends by the
corporate media for political purposes violates the basic principles of
journalistic ethics.

Since 2004, Amnesty International (AI) has considered Tamayo among Cuba’s
55 "prisoner of conscience". In addition, it has noted that Zapata’s
hunger strike was launched not only to protest his conditions of
detention, but also to demand a television, a personal
kitchen and a cell phone to call his family.[2] Although not
the devil incarnate, Zapata was not a model prisoner. According to
Cuban authorities, he was guilty of several acts of violence during his
incarceration, especially against guards, leading to his conviction
being increased to 25 years.[3]

Curiously,
AI has never mentioned the alleged political activities that landed
Zapata in prison. The reason is relatively simple: Zapata never carried
out any anti-government activities prior to incarceration. Instead, the
organisation recognises that he was convicted in May 2004 and sentenced
to three years' imprisonment for "contempt, public disorder and
resistance".[4] This sentence is relatively minor compared
to the sentences, ranging up to 28 years, that were handed down to the
75 opposition figures convicted in March 2003 of "having received funds
or materials from the US government to carry out activities that the
authorities consider subversive and damaging to Cuba", as recognised by
AI is a serious crime in Cuba and any country in the world. Here
AI cannot escape an obvious contradiction: on the one hand these people
qualify as "prisoners of conscience" and on the other it admits they
committed the serious crime of accepting "money or materials from the US government".

Unlike
the 75, the Cuban government has never accused Zapata of accepting
funds from a foreign power and has always considered him a common
convict. Zapata had a serious criminal record. Since June 1990, he had
been arrested and convicted several times for "disturbing the peace,
two counts of fraud, public exhibitionism, injury and possession of
non-firearm weapons". In 2000, he fractured the skull of Leonardo Simon
using a machete. His criminal record does not involve any political
actions. It was only after his imprisonment that his mother, Reyna
Luisa Tamayo, approached government opposition groups, but she has
never been bothered by the authorities.[6]

Double standards?

The United States
and the European Union declared their consternation and demanded the
"release of political prisoners". "We are deeply distressed by his
death", said US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who denounced the
oppression of political prisoners in Cuba. Brussels followed suit and demanded the "unconditional release of all political prisoners". France’s foreign ministry spokesperson Bernard Valero announced that "following his situation closely, we called for his
release along with the other detainees whose health seemed particularly worrying".[7]

Cuba's President Raúl Castro "regretted" the death and responded to the uproar from Washington and Brussels
by stating "in half a century, we have not murdered anyone here, no one
has been tortured, and there have been no extrajudicial executions.
Well, here in Cuba there have been people tortured, but at the Guantanamo Naval Base", he said in reference to the torture centre under US administration. "They say they want to hold talks with us and we are ready to discuss with the US
government all issues they want. I repeated it three times in parliament... We will not accept discussions unless both
parties enjoy absolute equality. They can investigate or ask any
questions in Cuba, but we have the right to ask about all the problems of the United States."[8]

During
a visit to Cuba, Brazil's President Lula da Silva also declared his
sympathy, but wished to highlight the double standards of the corporate
media of Washington and Brussels, recalling a sad reality, "I know about
virtually all the hunger strikes that have taken place over the past 25
years in the world and many people have died on hunger strikes in many
countries".[9] The media ignored the vast majority of those
tragic cases and absolutely none received the media coverage that has
been afforded this Cuban inmate.

By
comparison, in France between January 1, 2010, and February 24, 2010,
there were 22 suicides in prisons, including a 16-year-old boy. In 2009
there were 122 suicides in French prisons and 115 in
2008. State secretary of justice Jean-Marie Bockel declared his
impotence in these situations: "When someone decides to commit suicide
and is determined to do, whether they are free or in prison, ...
there is nothing you can do about it." The families of those victims
were not entitled to the same media treatment as Zapata, nor even an
official public statement from the French government.[10]

Ignored

We
must put the Zapata’s case into perspective by looking at two much more
serious situations deliberately ignored by the corporate media that
clearly illustrate the politicisation and manipulation of this ordinary
incident that would pass unnoticed in most countries, except Cuba.

Since the coup in Honduras
took place and the military dictatorship was established on June 27,
2009, led first by Roberto Micheletti and then, since January 28, 2010,
by Porfirio Lobo, there have been more than a hundred murders and
countless cases of disappearances, torture and violence. The abuses
occur daily, but are carefully omitted from the coverage of the corporate media. Thus,
when Claudia Larissa Brizuela, a member of a group opposed to the coup,
the National Resistance Front (FNRP), was murdered on February
24, 2010, just one day after the death of Zapata, there was not a
single word about it in the corporate press.[11]

A similar case further illustrates the duplicity of the corporate media. In December 2009 in La Macarena, Colombia, the largest mass grave in the history of Latin America was discovered, with no fewer than 2000 bodies. According to testimonies collected by British MEPs on the ground in La Macarena,
these were the bodies of union and peasant leaders killed by the
paramilitaries and the Colombian army's special forces.

Jairo Ramirez,
lawyer and secretary of the Standing Committee for the Defense of Human
Rights in Colombia,
described the grisly scene: "What we saw was frightening. Countless
corpses and hundreds of white wooden plaques inscribed with NN and with
dates ranging from 2005 to the present. The army commander told us they
were the bodies of guerrillas killed in combat, but the people of the
region told us of the many community leaders, farmers and community
advocates who have disappeared without a trace." Despite the many
testimonies and the presence of the MEPs, despite a visit by a Spanish
parliamentary delegation to investigate, no corporate media has given
even a little attention to this news.[12]

The
suicide of Orlando Zapata Tamayo is a tragedy and his mother’s pain
must be respected. But there are unscrupulous people -- the corporate
media, Washington and the European Union -- who care little about his death,
just as they care little for the Hondurans and Colombians killed every
day. Zapata is useful to them only in the media war against the Cuban
government. When ideology is placed above objective information, truth
and ethics are the first victims.